Week Ahead: February 23

Welcome back!  I hope you had a great break and are ready for the great fun to come between now and Spring Break.  Let’s see:  MRISA MS Soccer, visit from George Hart (cool math guy), pre-registration for 2015-16 school year, VTC Conference, MRISA Arts Exchange and Luka Lesson visit, WWW, GINSaigon, ETC 2015, Student Led Conferences, MS Blast!, MAP testing, WrAP testing, and Earth Week.  Yep, lots of fun!  Hang on for the big ride of March/April!

But we just have 3 days this week to ease into it.  Here is what’s up:

Monday, Feb. 23:
No School

Tuesday, Feb. 24
No School

Wednesday, Feb. 25
Day 1 ABCD
3:15-4:30  Divisional Mtg, Library (7th grade EAL/LS review 3:15-4, tech focus 4-4:30 bring laptop)

Thursday, Feb. 26
Day 2 EFGH
MRISA Soccer leaves for Thailand
9:30-11 Admin Mtg
4:00 B team game with BIS @ SSIS

Friday, Feb. 27
Day 3 BCDA (HL Schedule)
HL Sponsored by Green

Saturday, Feb. 28
7-11 Faculty Follies

Volunteers Needed for Study Zone (for 2 weeks)
We would like to keep study zone up and running during the ASA gap.  This means we need volunteers to cover Tues and Thurs. from 3-4:00.  It’s easy duty … just help keep kids with organization and task initiation.  Volunteer for 1 day or a few … if we all help, it will be easy!  Please email Molly a day you are willing to take.  Thank you in advance for helping keep Study Zone running during the end of the quarter!

Food Committee Volunteer Needed
MS needs a rep on the school wide food committee.  Feel passionate about the food we have available in our cafeteria?  Want to make a different with just a few meeting a year?  Please let me know if you’d be willing to serve on this committee for the rest of this year.  Minimal time commitment – opportunity to have a big impact!

Repeat Announcement: New Attendance Codes for PowerSchool
To assist with tracking tardies to school, a new code has been entered into PowerSchool.  Please use TM (for Tardy Morning) if a student is tardy to the first block of the day.  This will save Mai Anh a great deal of time as she tracks students who are late to school (which is generally a different issue than if students are late to later blocks during the day).  We have also added a code for In School Suspension (SI) to differentiate it from an Out of School Suspension (S).

Repeat Announcement: Special Visits Coming
We have several special visitors coming the next few months.  Please add these to your plans:
March 2:  George Hart, mathematics rock star – Here is the schedule:

• 8:00 – 9:20 – Grade 6 – Playing Card Construction – 22 students (F Block – Andy Coffey)
• 9:40 – 10:55 – Grade 7 – Paper Geometric Construction – 23 students (G Block – Mark Crowell)
• 11:00 – 12:20 Grade 8 – CD construction – 24 students (H Block – Mark Crowell)
• 12:20 – 12:55 Lunch
• 1:00 – 3:30 Cardboard Sculpture with 30 students (Mathletes – Mark Crowell) Another cool link related to George Hart is his daughter’s, Vi Hart, YouTube site.  Way cool!

March 12-14: Luka Lesson, slam poet – this schedule is not finished, but there will be opportunities for classes to meet with Luka as well as an all division assembly time for a performance.  Luka will also be performing and working with the MRISA Arts Exchange.

Cool Instruction / Assessment Tip of the Week
From Danielle Richert:  Giving effective feedback to students and colleagues is an essential part of the growing/improving process.  Check out this graphic that includes sentence stems (yep, they work for us too)! RISE to the occasion.